A Study On Students' Involvement In Oral English Class

Teaching is composed of a series of activities which are carried out in the form of interaction between teachers and students or between students and students. As classroom is the major place where Chinese students learn English, students' involvement in classroom activities plays a decisive role in developing their language abilities. However, the teaching effects of oral English and learners' speaking abilities are far from satisfactory. Many learners have good command of English vocabulary and grammar, but they can not communicate with others in English. Students in China's oral English class often act as passive listeners rather than active participants. Students' inactiveness in class has become the main obstacle obstructing students'acquisition and development of language abilities. Therefore, it is imperative and necessary to investigate the factors influencing students' involvement in class and work out according solutions so as to improve the teaching effects of oral English and students'spoken ability.This paper sets out to explore the state quo of students' involvement and possible factors influencing students' involvement in oral English class in Wuhan Institute of Technology. In the research,137 English major sophomores were chosen as the subjects. First of all, this paper investigates the involvement condition in oral English class by means of classroom observation. In order to facilitate the recording of data, the teacher and students' behaviors are divided into nine types based on Flanders' Interaction Analysis Categories:the teacher's lecturing; the teacher's questioning to the whole class; the teacher's questioning to a particular student; the teacher's comment on students' answers; the teacher's answering of students' questions; the whole class' answering of the teacher's questions; a particular student's answering of the teacher's questions; students' questioning to the teacher; students' responses to other students' answers. The results of classroom observation show that students' involvement was in a low percentage and the degree of active involvement is far from satisfactory. Then a questionnaire survey was conducted to find out the major factors affecting students' involvement. The questionnaire covers the possible internal and external factors which can exert influences on students' involvement in class. The internal factors include linguistic factors and affective factors while the external factors include teacher's fairness of treating students, waiting time, classroom atmosphere, teacher feedback, teaching material, language proficiency evaluation system and so on. The results of questionnaire survey reveal that the major factors influencing students'involvement are:anxiety and self-concept; teaching material; teacher's fairness of treating students; classroom atmosphere; teacher feedback and language proficiency evaluation system.Finally, some suggestions on how to activate students'involvement are proposed based on the major findings. The suggestions are:1) choosing appropriate teaching materials; 2) establishing proper teacher expectation; 3) building up positive classroom atmosphere; 4) providing positive feedback to students; 5) adopting reasonable language proficiency evaluation system.